SeedVessel
culture art gardens
cultivating insurgent paradises
in urban eco-scapes
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Thu, 04 Mar 2004
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An Excerpt from Anne Truitt's DAYBOOK:the journal of an artist (thanks due to MAN) "...This instantaneous recognition of quality has been very ,very rare in my experience with artists I am called upon to gauge, and in these modest circumstances I make it a habit to start by coming to respectful attention. It is such an act of courage to put pencil to paper that I begin by honoring the artist's intention. Usually the work falls into a range I have to examine with my mind, in the light of what I know about the history of art and about its techniques. If the work is the result of honest effort, I acknowledge its validity but I look for the skill and talent that set apart potentially significant art. I try to discern the range of the artist's gift. When this range coincides with contemporary artistic concerns, the work has cognecy in an historical context. This seems to me to be a matter of luck. A perfectly articulated range of sensibility may be just plain irrelevant to the problems confronting artists ambitious to make work of the highest quality in this historical sense. The degree to which an artist addresses these problems usually indicate the degree of his or her ambition. There is a sort of "feel" that marks relevant art. To some extent it can be learned, and here I find that young artists can badly deceive themselves: They can fall into using intelligence the wrong way; they can fail to realize that the purpose of scanning contemporary art is to use its articulations for the purer realization of their own work. As a carpenter might reach out for a new invented saw, the work of other artists may suggest techniquesor even solutions. But the essential struggle is private and bears no relation to anyone else's. It is of necessity a solitary and lonely endeavor to explore one's own sensibility, to discover how it works and to implement honestly its manifestations. It is ultimately character that underwrites art. The quality of art can only reflect the quality and range of a person's sensitivity, intellect, perception, and experience. If I find an artist homing in on himselff or herself, i bring maximum warmth to bear, knowing full well that the process is painful,and, lonely as it is, susceptible to encouragement. Companionship helps. And the pleasure of being with younger or less experienced artists can be intense--the delight of watching people grow into themseleves, becoming more than they have known they are. Sometimes artist use their work for ends that have nothing to do ith art, placing it rather in the service of teir ambitions for themselves in the world. This forces their higher parts to serve their lower parts in a sad inversion of values. And is, in art perhaps more than in any other profession, self-defeating. Prity of aspiration seems virtually prereqiste to genuine inspiration." |